Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today

Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. By Marc Lynch. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 293p. 24. 50. The book delves into the crucial subject of the new independent media and politics in the Middle East. It examines the changing landscape of Arab public discourse consequent to the proliferation of the new Arab media—al-Jazeera, Abu Dubai TV, al-Manar, al-Arabiya, al-Hurra, and a host of other satellite television stations—over the past decade. The study contends that these new Arab media outlets have freed the dissemination of information from the shackles of state control, challenged old taboos on open discussion, and generated free debate about pertinent political and social issues—culture and identity, political reform, Palestine, Islam and modernity, and Iraq, among others. All this marked the birth of a new diverse Arab public sphere, which ended the previously controlled and muted Arab public discourse and posed a challenge to the future of Arab politics and to U. S. diplomacy.